156 MR. CLAUDE MGRLEr OX AFRICAN 



the Meru-jSTyeri Road at some 7000 feet, about 20th February, 

 1911. 



Ichneumon. 



This genus is nowadays used in the sense to which it was 

 restricted by Professor Thomson of Lund (Opusc. Entom., 1893, 

 p. 1911), though the difficult task of assigning to their correct 

 subgenera the very numerous species, that were therein included 

 in the earlier times and have been therein placed by careless 

 authors during the recent ones, is by no means yet completed ; 

 and this is as true of Africa as elsewhere, being especially 

 applicable to Tosquinet's descriptions of 1896. In fact, of the 

 fifty kinds still placed here from Africa, such things as /. iutra- 

 torius of Fabricius (1793), /. apicalis of Wiedeman (1824), /. 

 desjardinii of Brulle (1846), and I. frontalis of Guerin (1846; 

 nee Fourcroy in 1785) are unrecognizable without reference to 

 the scattered and probably lost types. Hence some synonymy 

 is sure to arise. M^^ own experience goes to show that this 

 genus is but poorly represented in the Ethiopian fauna, and that 

 such foi-ms as occur ha.A^e usually extended from the somewhat 

 broad distribution of palsearctic kinds throughout the southern 

 Mediterranean shores. 



1. RUBRORNATUS Cam. 



The male only of this conspicuous insect was brought forward 

 by Cameron (Records of the Albany Museum, i. 1904, p. 141) 

 from the Cape, whence I have not received it ; nor, curiously 

 enough, from any central part of the Continent. But about 

 Harrar in Abyssinia it must be of comparatively frequent occur- 

 rence, for fully half a dozen were comprised in a small collection 

 there made in 1910; and these males show considerable constancy 

 of markings in respect to the flavous and black, though the 

 peculiarly characteristic brick-red of the basal moiety of the 

 second segment may be half obscured by black as in the southern 

 type, black only narrowly at the sides or so broadly suffused with 

 that colour that the rufescence is traceable only betweeir the 

 deeply impressed gastrocoeli. This male is obviously allied to 

 the abundant palaearctic /. sarcitorius Linn., which extends to 

 Algeria ; and, judging by analogy, I here assign to it the 

 following female : — 



A very stout and closely punctate, dark crimson female, with 

 ovate abdomen ; central flagellar band, whole scutellum, apices 

 of second and third, and disc of the sixth segments, pale flavous ; 

 remainder of abdomen from base of third segment, small apical 

 mai'ks befoi'e its pale band on disc and sides or else the whole 

 centre of second segment, flagellar apices, sometimes disc of hind 

 coxse, and the Avhole thorax except mesonotum or also except 

 metanotum iudeflnitely, black. Mesonotum with a very faintly 

 nigrescent longitudinal central vitta ; stigma fulvous. Exactly 

 resembling /. sarcitorius in both structure and sculpture ; identical 



